Bud is so much like a cat and Zip in particular, like Jon, I often get their names mixed up. They both have that Jekyll and Hyde thing going, where they can be sweet and snuggly one minute and killers the next.
Bud, also like a cat, seeks the warmth of sunlight. In the morning he moves around the livingroom with the sun.
Bud runs to the fence behind my studio and barks. Lulu lifts her head ears up. Constance lets out a baa and Kim is ready to run.
Bud is barking at Zip who is calmly making his way from the marsh toward the barn. His shoulder blades move up and down and his paws feeling the earth beneath them. His tail is hanging down then curls up floating just above the ground.
I don’t know all the boundaries of Zips territory.
I’ve seen him go as far as the front porch on the west side of the farm. He drinks from the pond on the east, hunts in the marsh on the north, and slips under the fence and into the stand to trees on the south.
Back home he only bothers with the hens if they get too close to his barn. If I feed them anywhere else on the farm he either joins them or leaves them alone. If I throw meal worms in front of the barn door he chases them away.
He’s friends with Asher and Issachar but Constance will always butt him if she gets the chance.
He taunts Bud by sitting on the fence posts around the dog yard.
He sleeps in the barn, on the back porch, under the front porch or waits for Jon on the blue Adirondack chair under the apple tree.
Or he hangs out on Jon’s raised flower beds. His legs draped over the edge as if he were a panther in a tree.
Our compost was particularly pretty this morning.
I think it was the dried up blue berries that I tossed in after breakfast that added just the color it needed.
The sheep and donkeys get some, like the blueberries and apple cores. The teabags and banana peels go into the composter outside.
The flowers help too. Jon’s been buying them to photograph and when the petals fall from the stems it all goes into the compost.
Actual that’s just what the compost looked like to me this morning a colorful bouquet of flowers. It would make a good jigsaw puzzle too.
I’m as close as I can get to my Meditation Tree. So close I can barely see her.
So, when I finished sewing the backing and tacking with some beads around the Earth Energy Spiral, I rolled out my yoga mat and sat in front of my Tree.
I found myself looking first at the tree then what was happening beneath the tree. As if two different things were going on. The spiral an interior grounded space. The Tree reaching up to the heights of the sky.
I felt the spiral at the base of my belly and in my root chakra.
When I looked a the tree I thought of the Turkey Vulture I watched yesterday while walking in the back pasture. It circled low and wide to the ground, and slowly spiraled up into the bright cloudless sky, the circles getting smaller and smaller till it vanished from sight. In many cultures, because they fly so high, Vultures are seen with spiritual beings who touch the heavens.
A reminder of our higher selves.
We could never fly so high without good grounding
Soon my Meditation Tree will be on her way to her new home. Joye who bought it wrote “I have the perfect wall that I purposely left blank for something special when I moved into my apartment in December. The wall is across from my recliner where I sit to meditate.”
How could I doubt that I made my Meditation Tree just for her.
Mist rises from the cattails, last years flowers glowing. In a blink it’s gone.
Dew sparkles and flickers in the close cropped grass. The longer I look the more colors I see.
A broken hacksaw blade, rusty, long and pointed with a serrated edge looks like a branch among the stones. Has it been there all these years, or did it come up from the ground with the spring melt?
Slate on the old foundation thrown into shadow and glowing in the sun at the same time as blue as Blue Agate.
A sleek sharp winged bird slips out of the barn and over my head. My eyes see Barnswallow, but I know it too early.
They always come the first of May.
The thick fog made everything a little softer this morning.
It was only my second time at the CambridgeFood Pantry working on the Backpack Program, but I felt like I fit right in.
Maybe it’s because everyone there does very little talking and a lot of work. That is my comfort zone. I like to keep busy and filling up bags with food for kids is satisfying in many ways. When the bins and boxes filled with cereal, soups, apple and snacks start to run low, someone calls out to Scott what’s needed and he comes with more of it.
Last Thursday, when we ran out of apples, Scott brought out the last of the fruit cups instead. We were short oatmeal for five kids in one family. But Scott came up with a small box of corn flakes for them.
It’s kind of amazing how much food goes into the bags. And unlike buying clothes for someone who needs them, the food doesn’t last. The next week we’re packing bags so those same children have food for the coming weekend.
Right now we need more Instant Oatmeal to fill the Backpack bags this Thursday.
Yesterday Jon put up a post asking for Fruit Juice and so many of you contributed Sarah Harrington, the Director of the Cambridge Food Pantry, was able to take it off the wishlist for now.
If you can and would like to contribute to the Backpack Program, which makes sure that children who need it, will have breakfast and lunch for the coming weekend, just click here. It’s a link to the Cambridge Food Pantry Amazon Wishlist, specifically for Instant Oatmeal. It’s $15.99 for 48 packs of oatmeal. That’s 48 breakfasts for 48 kids.
You can also see the whole updated Cambridge Food Pantry Amazon Wish list here.
And thanks so much! I’ll be thinking of all you who did when I fill reach into the bin with Instant Oatmeal this Thursday and put them in the bags that will go to the kids who will be eating them Saturday and Sunday morning.
It’s the backing. Not as exciting as the front, but it still needs to be done. That’s what I worked on today after mailing out my Potholders and a couple of small Meditation Trees.
It always takes me longer to do the backings than I think it will. I forget what’s involved. Making the sleeve for a rod to go through at the top for hanging, hemming the sides so it’s “square” and of course all the sewing.
I always hand sew the backings.
The old fabrics I use are so inconsistent they’d never work on my sewing machine. But I also like what the edges look like when I hand sew them. It’s more organic, like a free-hand pencil line. Not one made with a ruler.
I used a piece of old linen table cloth for the backing. They work well. Tomorrow after I finish sewing it on I’ll see if I need to do some tacking to hold it together. Each piece is different, but sometime when there is something heavy like the tree in this piece, it needs a bit of shoring up.
I’ll post a photo of it all done tomorrow. My Meditation Tree is sold.
Jon and I have a five more books to sell. This time it’s mostly non-fiction with one novel by Tia Williams.
All the books are $10 each except The Domestic Dog by James Serpell which is $20. Shipping is $5 for one and a dollar or two more if you buy more than one.
If you’d like any of these books you can email me at [email protected]. Let me know which book you’d like and how you’d like to pay for it. I take checks, PayPal and Venmo.
Zadie Smith’s Feel Free is a book of Essays from 2018. I especially enjoyed her essays about art. They are really the best writing about the work of individual contemporary artists I have read. Maybe because they feel personal and are easy to relate to. Although I didn’t know of the artists she wrote about, by the time I finished the essay I wanted to see their work in person. We’re including Intimations also by Smith with Feel Free. It’s a small volume of essays written during and about the pandemic.
(This book is sold.) I found the copy of “When The Trees Say Nothing” by Thomas Merton in Jon’s office when we cleaned it up last week. I have a copy of the book that I keep by my Blogging Chair. I’m don’t read Merton the way Jon does. But this book, which has excerpts from Merton’s Journals about nature, touches my heart and inspires me.
I have to write a bit about Tia Williams A Love Song For Ricki Wilde because I love it so much. It is a love story that takes place in present day Harlem and during the Harlem Renaissance. It’s also the story of a young woman who realizes she has to leave her family in order to fulfill her creative dream of opening a florist. It’s filled with history and magic and still makes me smile when I think of it. I could also relate to it. That need to leave a bad situation, even if it is family, in order to become who we really are.
(This book is sold)James Serpell is Jon’s favorite writer about dogs and he feels this is the best book about dogs. We found this extra copy of The Domestic Dog in Jon’s office also. It’s in excellent condition and sells for $39 or more on Amazon. Since it was an expensive book we are charging $20 for it.
I didn’t read the last book, Fortunes Bazar, The Making of Hong Kong by Vaudine England. But you can click on the title below, all you can with the other books, to read a review of it. It too is in excellent condition.
Novel
A Love Song For Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
Non Fiction.
Feel Free and Intimations both by Zadie Smith
When The Trees Say Nothing by Thomas Merton Sold
The Domestic Dog By James Serpell Sold
Fortunes Bazar, The Making Of Hong Kong by Vaudine England
Buy these! YOU CAN PURCHASE MY WORK IN MY ETSY SHOP >
